The ongoing development of data networks often involves enabling greater connectivity by expanding the area covered by a network and/or improving the robustness of accessible coverage within a particular area. Network endpoint devices, such as wireless access points (APs), simplify the deployment network infrastructure equipment and enable rapid installation and/or expansion of a network within a coverage area. Each endpoint device in a network provides network access to a number of client devices.
Previously available network monitoring and management systems fail to provide real-time reporting of network traffic analysis because previously known methods use excessive amounts of network bandwidth and a large allocation of storage provided by the network operator. For example, using previously known methods each endpoint device reports traffic data that it has processed (e.g., routed or switched) to a network controller on a periodic basis (e.g., every 60 minutes). The bandwidth used to report traffic data to the network controller in this manner could otherwise be used for normal network traffic. So, in order to limit the bandwidth used, previously known methods limited the reports to highly simplified traffic data. For example, the traffic data that is reported using known methods has a large time granularity in order to limit the actual amount of data and, thus, information reported. As a result, the traffic data cannot be provided in real-time (or near real-time) and includes only a small subset of the information that can be collected by a network endpoint device. Moreover, even though the amount of information provided by a network endpoint device is limited to conserve bandwidth, a network controller typically maintains a large database to store the reported traffic data, which becomes unwieldy as the number of endpoint devices increases. Additionally, the network controller also typically takes a significant amount of time to aggregate and analyze traffic data reported for a respective time period. Thus, statistics generated based on the traffic data stored in the database do not provide a real-time (or near real-time) characterization of network traffic.
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